we found each other in the dark
by owedbetter
Summary: He was not good with words in this body - but he asked all the same. And responded to her answer in the only way he could. (Post-Last Christmas. Oneshot. The Doctor asks if Clara's staying with him full time or not, as best he can.)


**A/N:** I don't even know what this was. It just kind of came together. This song came on shuffle (and it's one of my favourite OTP songs ever) and this picture came into my head so... But also, it fit in with the whouffaldi countdown weekly prompt thing! Yay!

If you'd like to leave what you think about this little piece or how you feel about it, I'd appreciate it loads. And hell, if you have any prompts - leave them as reviews or send over a message at wntersouffle or owedbetter on the tumbles and we'll see what I can do, yeah?

All my love,  
Jo x

P.S. As of writing this, chapter 3 of "tea and relative distress (including zombies)" is at 1300+ words. If you're reading that, that is. You're under no obligation to do so. You do you, friend. Hope you have a lovely day! :)

* * *

" _When the smoke does finally pass, we will rise above the ash. We're gonna live at last._  
 _So bright, the flames burned in our hearts that we found each other in the dark._

 _..._

 _Through the black starless waters and the cold lonely air._  
 _On the rock restless seas, the vessel in deep disrepair._  
 _And I swore I heard them singing but then oh, rejoice._

 _I can still hear your voice._

 _Then I heard the church bells from afar but we found each other in the dark._ "

 **"We Found Each Other in the Dark" - City and Colour**

* * *

She glowed.

She always glowed to him; her skin radiated with that only all too human warmth; the air around her practically sung. He could hear how space bent around her. He knew the precise shape of her shadow - he could pick it out from a room made of silhouettes. He could see and count every single hair out of place on her head - how it stuck out, static bidding it to stand while (for the most part) the rest fell and swayed to her every command. Parts of her defiant, parts of her controlled. Right then, she was looking up at him with those eyes that he knew she knew how to use all too well to her advantage when need be but could very well bleed out uncontrolled truth where there was too much of it to keep in. There was so much of her - so much in her - and she was so human; he wondered how it is that she could still stand so tall despite it all. He could feel every vibration that her heart emitted from beating - ever the fighter - and he knew its precise rhythmic pattern with her every move, every exertion. None of this is consciously done - he saw and felt so much of her from just looking; the more articulate part of his brain could not quite catch up with how much of her he saw.

He could see every bit of detail in her irises, calculate the speed of her pupils' dilation with its correlation to her heartbeat's pattern and the reaction of her sweat glands but the only words he could think of to describe them were big, wide. He could tell that her toes were curling inside her shoes and she rocked (ever so slightly, just as restless as he was only better concealed) back and forth, her muscles antsy and still high on the adrenaline of running and he knew the pattern of her gait and the speed of her blood flow in her deep veins but all he could say, if asked, of her legs was that they were short. This was not his most verbose incarnation and looking at her, seeing her for all she is - he could not find the words. She was Clara and that was all the explanation and reason he needed.

 _Clara, Clara, Clara._

And she glowed.

"Clara?" he managed to say out loud. Something about a shower or a lie down, she'd mentioned.

The room was bright only for the light that the console allowed within the room. The old girl simulated something softer, something darker for some semblance of the night, stimulating the need for rest. It was the end of the day, after all, and after running, running, running - there was need for reprieve.

This was usually the time she asked to be dropped back to her flat. Back home, to the one she'd chosen - not the one he'd offered (here, it went unspoken; _with me_ ) - and the one she considered real, the one she lived in from day to day only to have him come back to her when she wanted him to. And she did want him to but there was the unspoken truth that he'd long since accepted that he was not welcome in her life full time. That was how it was, at least, and he'd lived with it as best he could but this silly old madman, this foolish old Time Lord could not help but hope. He flicked a switch that did nothing (deleted a room somewhere, probably) and didn't look at her when she turned back around to face him.

"Yeah?" she asked, nonchalant.

She was still in her nightgown from the Christmas when he got her back but he didn't register that fact, couldn't be bothered to see when there was so much of her to see instead. Like how her cheeks were plump and dimpled from the grinning. Like the rapid rise and fall of her chest that might have something to do with her still excitable heartbeat and the exact temperature of her breath that he could feel even from the distance between them. She blinked twice, lashes gentle like rolling shallow tide against her skin. The air was warm around her and it was all he could do, as always, to not just gawk. There rest a tightness in his chest, her voice ringing in his ears - high and breathy as her lungs were still thirsting for air. He didn't know how to say it. But he tried.

"Are you- are you staying?"

"Staying?"

She raised a brow but the other could not help but follow suit. Her breathing was starting to slow down. The TARDIS hummed gently around them and he could feel her prodding, her quiet _get on with it!_ support. He licked his thin, dry lips, his hands itched to do something other than be still. Restless.

"Here." _With me,_ he wanted to add but didn't. Could have but didn't. Again.

Clara blinked and blinked again, something else happening in those eyes of hers that he couldn't quite place and how the corners of smiling lips still twitched upward. Fondly was the word he was looking for, if he were to ask her but he didn't.

She didn't say anything - couldn't say anything, more like - and, for a moment, he revisited the memory he'd first done something like this. " _If you want to be,_ " he said to her then when she'd asked if she was home - different things to both of them and she didn't know the weight that grew in the middle of him that sunk at her first apology. She was saying no - and he was being stupid enough to ask again now. Did she not know the depths to which he would break himself for her? Don't ask him why he was asking again now; he would blame the high of the running they'd just done. Ends of her nightgown and his coat were singed from an adventure they'd just gotten back from, there was grime on patches of them that they couldn't quite be bothered with right then and there. And all he wanted to do was ask one thing - just one thing - and the words would not come. Could not come. She simply looked at him and he still wondered what those human eyes of hers could see. It looked like she heard what he could not make himself say.

"Kind of thought that with the whole 'please don't even argue' thing at Christmas, it went without saying."

He didn't understand but she was smiling - sometimes she smiled when she was lying, sometimes she smiled when she was sad (you couldn't blame him for being as confused as he was). It felt as though there was a force wrapping around his hearts, constricting them. He stammered.

"Is- is that a yes or no? Are you staying?"

She stepped closer; he willed himself to not step back on instinct - there was so much of her enough as it is and so near (and any nearer, he would not know how to be if he had to let her go again) - but swallowed a breath instead. Her tiny human hand rest against the console, soft little fingers tapping thoughtlessly against the smooth metal. She glowed - the way the moon did in stark contrast with the night, like her skin was soaked in sunlight and she radiated the defiant day that dared exist in his endless night - and he dared not breathe for fear of the chemistry of her that lingered in the air that lived around her (how he might react, his energy forever changed by the charge of her). All that from a look by those too wide bright eyes, from a single step closer, from a single breath, from a single heart that beat much too quickly to be considered normal.

"Yeah," she said (her lips moved and there was breath that came from her speaking but the sound was barely there; it was not even a whisper but he still heard her), biting a bit of her lower lip for some reason that he could not fathom. Nodded almost imperceptibly. "Yeah, I'm staying. If that's okay with you."

Heat prickled behind these old eyes of his and he was smiling. She was smiling. Christmas again.

There might be words that could describe how he felt - metaphors abound, human's purple prose that might be able to articulate the hurricane of sheer, pure emotion that coursed then through his alien veins - but no language ever foresaw this. Perhaps this was not made to be read or told - there are some things that could only ever be felt, the things that dig beneath the shell of your skin and seep into your bones that you could never shake off and will be a part of you for all the rest of your days, even when it's gone. When she's gone. But for now, the Doctor felt - hearts heavy and soaring and tight and light all at the same time.

"More than okay."

His voice was but a whisper - his was a voice that could roar, all mighty and thunderous, letting kingdoms and stars come crashing down with a single syllable, but turned soft and shy for her. And because he had not the words to tell her - he was neither Shakespeare nor Siken - he stepped closer to her instead. It helped that she had nothing to say either.

He held her hand and she felt it - the wave of all the words he would have said if they existed all wanting to say the same thing: _I'm not letting go of you ever again._

His palm rest against her dimpled cheek and he pressed his thin lips to her forehead - the same wave flooding like a morphine drip, saying something else that might have gone along the lines of: _You are precious to me._ But more - infinitely more than just that.

Words – three little ones felt in ways that no words (big or little) could ever verbalise – hung in the air between them. Words neither of them could say but theirs are liars' eyes that, to each other, glisten with their shared unspoken truth. In the end, theirs has always been the oldest story in the universe. A little more love, a little more chaos than most – but still just as old and just as beautiful. Just as cruel and just as kind.

Clara looked up at him then and, in this shared darkness of theirs, he glowed.


End file.
